The Daily Bleed Reference Page for the Month of June: A Calendar Better Than Boiled Coffee!

U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right to publish the documents under the protection of the First Amendment. The NY Times had finally tired of being mouth-piece for the government line/lies on the war, & Daniel Ellsberg had the dirt, which he originally considered publishing in the LA Free Press because he could find no mainstream newspapers (free press) who would touch the papers.

1914 -- [June 14] Libertarian conference at in São Paulo, Brazil.

Sessions for this conference were held Sundays through June & July: June 14, 21 & 28, & July 12 & 26. The primary purpose was to select & prepare two delegates to attend an anarchist Congress scheduled in London, England (it was cancelled due to the government conflagration of WWI consuming Europe).
Conferência Libertária de São Paulo - Rua José Bonifácio, 39-2º andar. Ao todo realizaram sessões nos domingos 14, 21 e 28 de junho, 5, 12 e 26 de julho de 1914. O objetivo principal era preparar e indicar dois delegados para representar o Brasil no congresso anarquista de Londres que não chegou a acontecer por causa da guerra.
Source: [ Arquivo de História Social ]

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1919 -- [June 14] Trotsky, drafts an order banning the Makhnovist (anarchist) Congress, & calls for the arrest of the delegates.

The Makhnovists rejected the Bolshevik corruption of the soviets & instead proposed "the free & completely independent soviet system of working people without authorities & their arbitrary laws". Their proclamations state the "working people themselves must freely choose their own soviets, which carry out the will & desires of the working people themselves, that is to say, ADMINISTRATIVE, not ruling soviets."
— Peter Arshinov, History of the Makhnovist Movement
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/MakhnoNestor.htm
http://www.cosmicbaseball.com/98aar.html#makhno
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bright/makhno/Makhno.html

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1921 -- [June 14]

Davis & Brockus lead state police & vigilantes in a raid on the Lick Creek tent colony, in retaliation for further sniping incidents. 47 strikers arrested & locked in the Williamson jail.

... show details

47 strikers arrested & locked in the Williamson jail. The State supreme court invalidates the martial law proclamation, citing complete absence of military forces in Mingo County. Governor Morgan issues second proclamation on June 27, directing sheriff to enroll 2 companies of militia for 60-days service; volunteer state police disbanded.

West Virginia miners fight with mine guards, police, & federal troops in a dispute over organizing labor unions over the past year. Mingo County has been under martial law since November 1920, & will not be rescinded until 1922. Matters heat up again in August.

God, if You had but the moon
    Stuck in Your cap for a lamp,
Even You'd tire of it soon,
    Down in the dark & the damp.

Nothing but blackness above
    & nothing that moves but the cars. . . .
God, if You wish for our love,
    Fling us a handful of stars.

— Louis Untermeyer
excerpt from Caliban in the Coal Minesfrom Challenge, 1914

[Sources]

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1968 -- [June 14] Rirette Maitrejean & the Bonnot Gang

Raymond Callemin, Eugene Dieudonne, Andre Soudy, & Monier, are condemned to death; Paul Metge & Edouard Carouy get life without parole (Carouy commits suicide tomorrow, in his cell).
Their accused accomplices: Jean de Boe: 10 years forced labor; Gauzy: 18 months prison; Kibaltchiche (aka, Victor Serge, editor of "L'anarchie"): five years prison. Rirette Maitrejean is freed. Louis Rimbault, sentenced to prison, fakes mental illness & gains his release. Eugene Dieudonne's death sentence was commuted to life. After several escapes, & following a campaign for his release headed by Albert London, he was pardoned in 1925.
"It was in the black mirror of anarchism that surrealism first recognised itself."

— Andre Breton, 1952

The surrealists had not hesitated in 1923 in showing solidarity with the young anarchist woman Germaine Berton who had killed an activist of the extreme right nationalist party L'Action Francaise & who was aqcquitted in a jury trial! Another member of the surrealist group, Robert Desnos, had associated with the individualist anarchist circles of Victor Serge & Rirette Maitrejean, while according to a police record, the surrealist poet Benjamin Péret had been active in an anarchist group in the Paris region & had contributed to the anarchist paper "Le Libertaire."
http://libcom.org/history/1919-1950-the-politics-of-surrealism

Source:
http://ytak.club.fr/juin2.html#14

In French, see La bande à Bonnot,
http://www.chez.com/durru/bonnot/bande.htm

See also Doug Imrie's article, "The Illegalists" in the Stan Iverson Archives, & background material on the Bonnot Gang, online,
http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/BonnotGang/calleminWhy.htm

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1896 -- [June 15] Gérard Duvergé Gerard Duverge

Duvergé became an anarchist in 1935, writing for the anarchist press, & joined a group in Agen in 1936. He was also involved with "la libre pensée" & the "Ligue Internationale des Combattants de la Paix." But it was within the framework of the Fédération des oeuvres laïques that Duverge found his ideal best realized, where he & his companion Henriette organized youth camps.
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In 1939, with Spanish Republicans & other defeated refugees forced into camps in southern France, Duvergé lodged exiles on their premises &, with Aristide Lapeyre, also set up a libertarian school at Agen.
With the intervention of WWII Duvergé became involved with the underground resistance.
He was arrested January 28, 1943 & he died the next day after being tortured by the Gestapo.

" L'enfant n'est pas la propriété des parents. Ceux-ci n'ont pas le droit de le plier aux exigences de leur égoisme, de leur propre servitude. Leur rôle consiste à lui procurer la subsistance qu'il ne peut se procurer lui-même et à le protéger contre la société."
— Gérard Duvergé, bulletin of the SNI, June 1936

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1942 -- [June 15] Vera Figner dies

As a leader of the 'People's Will' movement in the 1880s, Vera Figner organized resistance within the Russian army & navy &, in 1880, she plotted to blow up Tsar Alexander II's train. That plot failed.
After the tsar was assassinated in 1881, Figner & other movement leaders were arrested. Her death sentence was never carried out (commuted), but she spent more than 20 years in solitary confinement, where she wrote her memoirs, How the Clock of Life Stopped.

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Vera Figner was director of the Kropotkin Museum until she was herself banished by the Communists on Feb. 3, 1930, at age 78, for protesting against the maltreatment of women' in communist prisons.
(Alexander Atabekian another of the veteran anarchists who founded the Museum; was arrested in the 30s & presumably died in a Stalinist labor camp in 1940. See Emma Goldman's My Disillusionment in Russia — Ch 28). Figner was highly critical of the Bolshevik government & in his book Memoirs of a Revolutionary (1945), Victor Serge (who translated her memoirs into French) reveals that Vera was closely watched & nearly arrested by the Communist Secret Police.
Oscar Wilde's Vera, or the Nihilist (written 1880), combines details from the lives of Vera Figner, author of memoirs, who spent 22 years in Schlusselberg Fortress for her activities as an anarchist, & Vera Zasulich, who shot & wounded Gen. Trepov, City Prefect of St Petersburg, & went on to advocate the assassination of the Tsar; Wilde intended Sarah Bernhardt to play the part; in 1882, Bernhardt was playing in Fedora by Sardou, with a similar theme. (source; corrig. supplied by D. C. Rose, Goldsmiths Coll., London; 27.07.01.)

After release from prison in 1904, Figner was exiled to Siberia. Ten years later, when the Bolsheviks gained power, she became a national heroine.
See her memoirs Nacht über Rußland (Night over Russia [Moscow, 1930]) & Memoirs of a Revolutionist New York: International publishers [c1927].
Memoirs (In Yiddish) Verlag, Wecker, 1925, 3 volumes, edition unknown; she published three books 'the prisioner of Shlisselburg', After Shlisselburg', & Memoirs of a revolutionary.
See also Webster's Biographical Dictionary & Five Sisters: Women Against the Tsar; The Memoirs of Five Young Anarchist Women of the 1870s edited & translated from the Russian by Barbara Alpern Engel & Clifford N. Rosenthal (Boston; London: Allen & Unwin, 1987)
In French, see Ephemeride anarchiste for this date, & also Fijols (soulèvement de)

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1963 -- [June 15] Seattle's first civil rights march

More than 700 people attended a "freedom march" protesting racial discrimination in Seattle. The marchers, many of whom were white, walked in silence but carried signs. The Rev. Mance Jackson announced that the Bon Marché promised 30 new jobs for African Americans in its downtown & Northgate stores.

Source:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/lifestyle/59696_blackhistory26.shtml

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1933 -- [June 16] National Industrial Recovery Act passes

The National Recovery Administration (NRA) codes establish maximum hours & minimum wages for every major industry. It also abolishes sweatshops & child labor, give workers the right to bargain through their own union representatives, & specifies businesses must open their books to government inspection.
Eventually Congress approves some 550 codes, including the Burlesque Theater Code, limiting shows to four striptease acts. The clause allowing collective bargaining turns businesses against the New Deal & leads to management-run company unions.
The business interests eventually ally with liberal Supreme Court justices, who think the New Deal unfairly favors businesses. In 1935, the court declares large portions of the act unconstitutional.
Source:

[Insurgent Radio Kiosk]

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1937 -- [June 16] Spain: Members of the POUM Executive Committee & foreign activists are rounded up. The POUM is proscribed & its militants persecuted by the Stalinists & the Republic's police.

Fidel MIRO: Things had changed radically; Largo Caballero & the left-wing socialists had stepped down by then, & the CNT had been dropped from the government. & after the happenings in May there was a feeling in everyone’s mind that we had lost a lot of our strength & that the Communist Party was on the up & up & that all of the good weapons arriving from Russia were going to the troops that the communists commanded.
Angel URZAIZ: Surreptitiously they started to worm their way into the army, into the corps of commissars, into the military intelligence services which they captured completely.
Ramon ALVAREZ: & we were convinced that the idea was to carry out Stalin’s orders to wipe out the anarchists above all else, to capture the positions of command & wind up the war once Stalin might decide that the time was right. That this was what was afoot.

Ethel MacDonald visited comrades in prison, smuggling in food & letters. She helped several foreign anarchists escape from Spain, borrowing clothes for their disguise & getting them on board foreign ships. She was finally captured & imprisoned herself. In prison she helped organise a hunger strike in every prison where there were anarchist prisoners...
... show details

Released in July 1937 Ethel MacDonald remained in Barcelona underground until September, when she was deported to France. Back in Scotland, she spoke out consistently against the Stalinist attacks on the POUM & anarchists...

http://recollectionbooks.com/anow/history/spain/
http://flag.blackened.net/af/org/issue49/reviews.html [Sources]

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2000 -- [June 16] England: Residents Against McDonald's (RAM) celebrate an historic victory.

Following exactly 18 months of controversy & determined opposition, two days ago McDonald's threw in the towel & handed back the lease on the pub to the original owners.

On Sunday 13th December 1998 local residents in Hinchley Wood, Surrey moved caravans on to the car park of their >well-loved local pub ['The Hinchley Wood'] which had been leased by McDonald's — their aim was to occupy the site & stop it from being turned into a fast food joint.

See: http://www.mcspotlight.org/media/press/releases/msc160600.html

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1903 -- [June 17] Mother Jones & textile strike in Kensington, Pennsylvania

Mother Jones was called to assist a strike by 75,000 textile workers in Kensington, Pennsylvania. The strikers include 10,000 small children, who Jones says (quote) "came into Union Headquarters, some with their hands off, some with the thumb missing, some with their little fingers off at the knuckle."
Mother Jones confronts reporters who say they cannot publish the facts because the millowners have stock in the papers. Jones also will take an army of the children on a march to New York City.
Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader President Theodore Roosevelt refuses to see her or answer her letters, but the marchers receive national attention &, despite a defeat in Kensington, Pennsylvania legislators pass a child-labor law, setting 14 as the earliest age a child can work in a factory.
Source:

[Insurgent Radio Kiosk]

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1911 -- [June 17]

The consequences of these poorly devised strategies eventually opened the way for the retaking of Tijuana by Diaz's former Federal troops, now lead by Madero on June 17, & the final dissolution of the PLM forces by defeat & desertion.
During the mayhem of the battle to retake Tijuana, many Wobblies snuck back across the border, including the famous Wobbly, songwriter Joe Hill. Commander Mosby, head of the infamous Magonista "Foreign Legion," was arrested & then shot when he refused to incriminate Magon in court via the infamous ley de fuega (law of fire), which is a deceitful way of covering up a police murder by alleging that the prisoner was attempting to escape.
... show details

When Madero began forcibly disarming the PLM troops in his area if they refused to join him, Magon retorted in the February 25 edition of Regeneracion, "Madero is a traitor to the cause of Liberty." This created much confusion on both sides of the border & alienated potential socialist supporters who thought the fight against the ousted Diaz was all that mattered. They now worried that Magon would just use their donations to foment factionalism.
As Ricardo Flores Magón's power began its serious decline, someone told him, "It would take a forest of trees to hang all the Judases." Indeed, his very own brother, Jesus, ended up joining Madero's governmental forces that Magon was fighting against.
The Magonista forces languished in Mexicali for lack of ongoing support, & finally surrendered peacefully on June 17. Each man was given $10, with the American ex-soldiers receiving their first meal in several days at a Chinese restaurant in Calexico. Many Wobblies caught the next freight train out of town, riding the brake beams into an uncertain future. The remaining Mexican PLM soldiers dispersed themselves as best they could back into the rural pueblos.
Magon had hoped that Baja California would become the launching ground of an International Anarchist revolution, as he wrote on the PLM's September 1911 Program. The junta didn't move fast enough to dismiss the intriguing Pryce & seize the initiative offered by the Tijuana victory to also take Ensenada. These, along with the failure to powerfully confront the charges of filibustering in a timely manner, were among PLM's biggest shortcomings.

See: http://members.tripod.com/~Sandpaper/98-Summer/BajaRevPt1.html

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1953 -- [June 17] Gunter Grass's "The Plebeians Rehearse the Uprising"

The play was Günter Grass's "The Plebeians Rehearse the Uprising".
Mr. Grass's intentions are twofold. First he wants to show us the political artist at a moment of crisis. Second — & this intention is more misty — I think he wishes to show that political thought is useless without political action.
His play is based on one historical event, the workers' uprising in East Berlin in June, 1953. There, during the bleakest of conditions, with Walter Ulbricht, the Communist party leader, calling for ever-increased productivity, the workers briefly, & ineffectually, revolted. They marched down the streets shouting slogans; they threatened a general strike. But they had no leaders, no organization & — most importantly — no real encouragement from the West.
On June 16 the upheaval had been largely confined to Berlin. Today there were disturbances in several parts of the country. Roughly 274 towns & 372,000 strikers were involved...
Construction workers in Berlin marched to the Council of Ministers. Chanting, “We are not slaves,” demanding to see Beloved & Respected Comrade Leader Walter Ulbricht & other top leaders personally...

See:
http://www.dailysoft.com/berlinwall/history/berlinwall-timeline.htm

http://www.cia.gov/csi/books/17240/art-5.html

See also,
http://mars.vnet.wnec.edu/~grempel/courses/germany/lectures/38uprising.html
http://www.cia.gov/csi/books/17240/art-5.html
http://www.wellplacedpottery.com/alec/bongo/literature/eastgerman.php3

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1972 -- [June 17] Casualties & Convictions Resulting from Watergate

one presidential resignation

one vice-presidential resignation

40 government officials indicted or jailed

H.R. Haldeman & John Erlichman (White House staff) resigned 30 April 1973, subsequently jailed

John Dean (White House legal counsel) sacked 30 April 1973, subsequently jailed

John Mitchell, Attorney General & Chairman of the Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP) jailed

Howard Hunt & G. Gordon Liddy (ex-White House staff), planned the Watergate break-in, both jailed

Charles Colson, special counsel to the President jailed

James McCord (Security Director of CREEP) jailed

There's much more, but this gives you the general drift...

See: http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/ArchiveMirror/Parascope/nixon2.htm

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2001 -- [June 18] Travel ban to block 'anarchist' leaders Street clashes greet the 'Toxic Texan'...

Beloved & Respected Comrade Leaders Tony Blair & Jack Straw, both dismiss the protestors as an "anarchists' travelling circus".

Belgium has already signalled a get-tough approach when it takes over the EU presidency from Sweden next month: from next year it will host a summit every six months.
The Belgian police are more experienced than the peace-loving Swedes, who were caught out by the mayhem in Gothenburg - & were accused of overreacting by shooting three demonstrators.
With concern already high over anti-globalisation protests at next month's G8 summit of industrialised countries in Genoa, Germany & France called for consultations about a phenomenon now reluctantly accepted as a permanent feature of international diplomacy.
Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's new rightwing prime minister, told EU summit colleagues that up to 100,000 anti-capitalist protesters were expected to gather on July 20 in the narrow streets of Genoa. His government has announced it is trying to impose restrictions.
With Spain, which takes over the EU presidency on January 1, already anxious because of Basque separatist violence, Otto Schilly, the German interior minister, said he & his French counterpart, Daniel Vaillant, would be looking at a "coordinated & hard response to this new form of extremist, cross-border criminality".
The phenomenon will be seen as a test for David Blunkett, Britain's new home secretary, who could also take part in a planned meeting of all EU interior ministers.
Residents of the Swedish port were yesterday clearing up the mess caused by the violence as cranes removed giant containers used to block streets in the commercial heart of a normally placid city.
Relieved shopkeepers removed wooden boards fixed over windows near the conference centre, target of some 25,000 largely peaceful demonstrators concealing a hardcore of just a few hundred.
Hospitals said three people had been shot on Friday night, including a young, brick-throwing Swede filmed taunting the police seconds before being fired on & critically injured. In all about 90 people were hurt. Four thousand police were deployed & 536 people detained or arrested, including three Britons.
But the focus yesterday was already shifting to future events likely to be targeted by extremists, whom Tony Blair & his foreign secretary, Jack Straw, both dismissed as an "anarchists' travelling circus".
Ironically, many leading EU politicians, including Mr Straw & his new deputy, Peter Hain, are veterans of student protests though without the extremist links admitted by both Joschka Fischer, the German foreign minister, & Lionel Jospin, the French prime minister.
Mr Blair, untainted by such a past, said the protesters' arguments were as defective as their violent tactics. Globalism & free trade helped the world's poor, he insisted.
Yesterday Tony Benn, the veteran ex-cabinet minister & former MP, protested that such criticism was hypocritical when the protesters were only staging "a demand for democracy" against unelected bodies such as the International Monetary Fund, the European commission & the European Central Bank.
"Most people in Britain would have a lot of sympathy for what the protesters in Gothenburg are saying," said Mr Benn, who linked the protests to electoral apathy at home.
The leaders of the US, Canada, Japan, Britain, France, Germany, Italy & Russia are to gather in Genoa for two days. "Genoa is clearly going to be very difficult with all those little twisting streets, so the security is going to be very tight," said one diplomat.
Tougher frontier checks will almost certainly be imposed after Sweden quietly suspended its participation in the EU's Schengen borderless area. Interpol has built up a file on the main players in battles with police, from 1999's World Trade organization summit in Seattle onwards.
Related special report Globalisation
Related articles 15.06.01: Blair attacks summit protests 15.06.01, World dispatch: EU hosts drink from poisoned chalice 15.06.2001: Summit admits to Kyoto failure 15.06.2001: Street clashes greet the 'Toxic Texan'
15.06.2001: Germany backs direct EU tax Useful links The EU-US summit Protest.net: European summit protests J15: Non-violent mass action against the EU summit Non-violence network of Gothenburg The White House Kyoto treaty
— Ian Black in Gothenburg & Michael White
Monday June 18, 2001
The Guardian

See: http://www.guardian.co.uk/globalisation/story/0,7369,508634,00.html

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1981 -- [June 19] Senya Fleshin dies

Fleshin was active in Paris anarchist group with Samuel Schwartzbard, Alexander Berkman, Voline, Nestor Makhno, Jacques Doubinsky, et al.
alt; Nestor Machno
Among Emma Goldman 's closest comrades were Mollie Steimer & Senya Fleshin, who also left Soviet Russia after conditions there became intolerable for anarchists.
On Steimer, see Marsh, Anarchist Women,; Paul Avrich, Anarchist Portraits; Polenberg, Fighting Faiths; & the pamphlet, Sentenced to Twenty Years Prison (New York: Political Prisoners Defense & Relief Committee, 1919).
See also the memorial volume edited by Abe Bluestein, Fighters for Anarchism: Mollie Steimer & Senya Fleshin ([New York]: Libertarian Publications Group, 1983).
The documentary film, Anarchism in America (1982) weaves together archival footage — including Mollie Steimer

See: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAfleshin.htm

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1997 -- [June 19] Italy: Cops raid anarchist centers & homes across the country

At least 29 arrest warrants were issued & at least 39 people were informed that they were under official investigation. Of these some were already in jail: Antonio Budini, Carlo Tesseri, jean Weir & Christos Stratigopolus since September 1994 for a bank robbery near Trento; Orlando Campo, Gregorian Gargarin, Francesco Porcu for the Silocchi kidnapping; Horst Fantazzini (since 25 years) for many robberies & assault; & Marco Camenisch for bombings. In all it looks like some 68 people have been implicated by the police in this supposed "terrorist" gang. 21 anarchists were apprehended between Sept. 17, 1996, & the end of December, while 8 went underground. On December 18 two of those arrested were sentenced to 22 years in prison.
Also arrested in relation to the Milan bombing was Patrizia Cadeddu, one of the occupants of the Laboratorio Anarchico di Milano, arrested on 20 June for being the alleged deliverer of a supposed note claiming responsibility for the bombing by a group called Azione Rivluzionaria Anarchica (Anarchist Revolutionary Action). In September Cadeddu was transferred to Rome to be interrogated, supposedly by Marini, as part of the investigation of subversive associations.
On July 17, 1997, the judge presiding over the preliminary inquiry of the Roman Tribunal, Claudia D'Angelo, read the following sentence: "Let us remind you that all of the defendants were accused of: subversive association (art. 270 of the criminal code); subversive association leading to terrorism & the destruction of democratic order (art. 270); formation of & participation in an armed band (art. 360). In addition, all are charged with receiving stolen goods (art. 648).
... Anna Beniamino, Mario Frisetty, Maria Ludovica Maschietto, Alfredo Cospito, Nadia DePascal, Raffaele Scapuzzo, Carmela Antonia Scopetta, Giuseppe Scarso, Bruno Palamara, Roberto Sforza, Pierleone Porcu, Constantino Cavelleri, Anna Maria Sgarmella, Mario Anzoino, Maria Arenale, will be tried for participation in a subversive organization aiming to violently overthrow the economic & social order of the state (art. 270)." The judge has exonerated them of being in a armed band & of receiving stolen goods.
Loris Fantazzini, Pasquale Lorenti, Flavia Cannoletta, Roberto Gemignani, Marco Brizzolari, Maracino Domenico, Corrado Viola, Edoardo Massari, Giovanni Mario Sann & Bachisio Goddi are exonerated of all accusations.
Alfredo Maria Bonanno, Tiziano Andreozzi, Francesco Berlemmi, Antonio Budini, Marco Camenisch, Orlando Camp, Maria Apollonaria Cortimiglia, Luciano DiFazio, Liborio Falco, Horst Fantazzini, Antonio Gizzo, Franco Fonte, Gagarin Gregorian, Salvatore Gugliara, Christina La Forte, Angela Maria Lo Vecchio ' Guido Mantelli, Maria Marotta, Giuseppe Martino, Stefano Moreale, Mojdeh Namsetchi, Roberta Nano, Bruno Palamara, Fabrizio Pio, Francesco Porcu, Lorenzo Ricca, Giuseppina Roccobobo, Paolo Ruberto, Emma Sassosi, Rose Ann Scrocco, Antonio Sforza, Fabio Sforza, Massimo Sforza, Giuseppi Stasi, Christos Stratigopulos, Carlo Tesseri, Evangelia Tsioutzia, & jean Helen Weir will be tried for participation in a subversive organization aiming to violently overthrow the economic & social order of the state (art. 270), subversive association leading to terrorism & the destruction of democratic order (art. 270), formation of an participation in an armed band (art. 360) & receiving stolen goods (art. 648).
These defendants will also be tried on various individual charges against them."
The trials were to begin October 20,1997. As of this writing we have seen nothing new on the case accept that, interestingly enough, Alfredo Bonanno & Emma Sassosi were released on provisional liberty on October 31, after 13 months in jail awaiting trial. Other defendants who were already in jail under other sentences remain behind bars.

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1848 -- [June 20] American anarchist, Haymarket Martyr, Albert Parsons lives, Montgomery, Alabama (some sources say the 24th)

Albert Parsons was targeted for death by city leaders. A bomb was thrown at police during the Haymarket Bombing. Although Albert Parsons was not even present (the bomb was thrown at 10pm, after he & Lucy & his two children had left), he was indicted & convicted for his alleged participation. Police Captain John Bonfield, a brutal thug, had led the charge on the gathering of workers & evidence suggests he may have been involved in the bomb-throwing.
Lucy Parsons lived for 90 years & died without regrets for having fought the Chicago establishment tooth & nail for over 60 years. When Lucy died, police seized & destroyed her letters, writings & library. & so she has virtually disappeared from our memory.

Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano comments on “A Terrible Drama” (in his Memories of Fire, Vol. II):

“The scaffold awaited them. They were five, but Lingg got up early for death, exploding a dynamite cap between his teeth. Fischer was seen unhurriedly humming the ‘Marseillaise.’ Parsons, the agitator who used the word like a whip or a knife, grasps the hands of his comrades before the guards tie his own behind his back. Engel, famous for his sharp wit, asks for port wine & then makes them all laugh with a joke. Spies, who so often wrote about anarchism as the entrance into life, prepares himself in silence to enter into death.
“The spectators in the orchestra of the theater fix their view on the scaffold — a sign, a noise, the trap door gives way, now they die, in a horrible dance, twisting in the air. [Here he quotes Martí.]
“José Martí wrote the story of the execution of the anarchists in Chicago. The working class of the world will bring them back to life every first of May. That was still unknown, but Martí always writes as if he is listening for the cry of a newborn where it is least expected.”

See:
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/bright/aparsons/parsons.html
See also:
http://www.laborstandard.org/Vol1No3/MayDay.htm
http://www.luminist.org/Archives/Haymarket.htm

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1893 -- [June 20] Debs forms the American Railway Union (ARU)

Eugene Debs supported unionization & labor reforms, opposed strikes, & favored negotiation as a means to improve the conditions for laborers. He founded the ARU in 1893 to organize railroad workers, coal miners, & longshoremen employed in the industry, regardless of their skills. While the American Railway Union includes only workers born of white parents, it adopts an industrial strategy in the tradition of the Knights of Labor, uniting all railway workers in one great union rather than along craft lines.

In just a few months the union led an 18-day strike against the Great Northern Railroad, forcing management to reverse three wage cuts. The victory against a railroad with 2,500 miles of track & 9,000 employees was so remarkable — especially during a depression — that the union will sign up 2,000 members a day.

Within a year, the ARU has 150,000 members, almost as large as Samuel Gompers' American Federation of Labor. This sets the stage for Chicago's Pullman strike in 1894 — the first organized nationwide strike in U.S. history.

Source:

[Insurgent Radio Kiosk]
See also:
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Heroes/EugeneDebsSocialism.html

http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Goldman/Writings/Essays/gompers.html

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1912 -- [June 20] US: Voltairine de Cleyre (1866-1912) dies, age 45... The original anarchist-feminist. Two thousand attended her funeral at Waldheim cemetery where she was buried next to the Haymarket martyr's.

"The leaders of the anarchist movements in Latin America almost all began by rebelling against the Church before rebelling against the State. The founders of the anarchist movements in India & China all had to begin by discarding the traditional religions of their communities. In the United States, Voltairine de Cleyre was (as her name suggests) the child of freethinkers, & wrote & spoke on secular as much as political topics."

— Nicolas Walters, "Anarchism & Religion"

See:
Sharon Presley on DeCleyre
See also:
http://www.infoshop.org/afem_kiosk.html
http://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/bulletin/kslbarch.htm#jump15
Poetry by Voltairine de Cleyre
Quote from Voltairine de Cleyre
http://www.infoshop.org/texts/voltairine_FST.html

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1925 -- [June 20] Bulgaria: Vassil Ikonomov, anarchist guerilla

Guérillero anarchiste, figure importante du mouvement bulgare.
Fils d'un employé des postes, il est mobilisé, durant la première guerre mondiale qu'il termine comme jeune officier. Mais dégouté du militarisme, il rencontre Michel Guerdjikov qui lui fait découvrir l'anarchisme. En 1919, il adhère à la Fédération anarchiste communiste de Bulgarie (F.A.C.B) qui vient de se créer.
Partisan d'une guérilla révolutionnaire, contre la dictature de Stambolijski, il met son courage et sa détermination au service de l'organisation pour laquelle il commet de nombreuses actions terroristes. Les "expropriations" réalisées permettent la création de journaux et d'une maison d'édition. Il organise également des groupes de maquisards qui comptent dans leur rangs outre des anarchistes, des communistes, ou des membres du parti des paysans.
En septembre 1923, il prend une part active dans l'insurrection anti-fasciste. Les années 1924-25 voient la multiplications de ses actions, comme l'exécution de plusieurs personalités réactionnaires et même une tentative de capture du roi Boris III.
Traqué par l'armée et des groupes para-militaires, il est tué dans des circonstances mystérieuses le 20 juin 1925, alors qu'il prenait un bain dans une rivière près du village de Bélitsa.
Source:
http://ytak.club.fr/aout2.html#9

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1941 -- [June 20] River Rouge Plant & the first United Auto Workers (UAW) contract with Ford

The 1945 Trends in Collective Bargaining study noted that "by around 1940" the labor leader had joined the business leader as an object of "widespread cynicism" to the American employee.
Later in the 1940s C. Wright Mills, in his The New Men of Power: Amenca's Labor Leaders, described the union's role thusly: "the integration of union with plant means that the union takes over much of the company's personnel work, becoming the discipline agent of the rank-&-flle."
In the mid-1950s, Daniel Bell realized that unionization had not given workers control over their job lives. Struck by the huge, spontaneous walk-out at River Rouge in July, 1949, over the speed of the Ford assembly line, he noted that "sometimes the constraints of work explode with geyser suddenness." & as Bell's Work & Its Discontents (1956) bore witness that "the revolt against work is widespread & takes many forms," so had Walker & Guest's Harvard study, The Man on the Assembly Line (1953), testified to the resentment & resistance of the man on the line.
Similarly, & from a writer with much working class experience himself, was Harvey Swados' "The Myth of the Happy Worker," published in The Nation, August, 1957, Workers & the unions continued to be at odds over conditions of work during this period.
See John Zerzan's Organized Labor versus "The Revolt Against Work,

See:
http://geocities.com/cordobakaf/zerzan.html

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2004 -- [June 20] From the Dayton Daily News of June 20, 2004.

Ray Bradbury, author of the classic sci-fi book "Fahrenheit 451", is burning mad over Michael Moore's appropriation of his title for his Bush-bashing documentary, reports "The Philadelphia Inquirer."
"Number one, he didn't ask, and, number two? He took it...period," said the celebrated fantasy writer, whose 1953 novel gave Moore the inspiration for his "Fahrenheit 9/11" title. "What he has done is a crime."
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The title of Bradbury's antitotalitarian work refers to the temperature at which books burn.
Book titles are not subject to copyright; Moore's title isn't the same as Bradbury's. 9/11 is quite different from 451.
_____________

Bradbury sounds irritated that Moore didn't get in touch early on. Apparently Moore told him he was embarrassed.
The BBC story has a few more details: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/3821269.stm

Not mentioned in that story are the 1966 film "Fahrenheit 451" & the new to-be-released production of it. Also notable is Bradbury's short story "A Sound of Thunder" which is being made into a movie to be released this year. For those unfamiliar with it, this is a classic SF short story in which hunters pay a high price (in more ways than one) to travel back to prehistoric times to hunt & kill dinosaurs.

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1921 -- [June 21] In the Sacco & Vanzetti trial, a ballistics expert testifi